Chris Young can still envision his slider darting down and away from Albert Pujols. He can see the hulking, three-time NL MVP — at the height of his reign — reaching to put his bat on the ball. To this day, the 40-year-old Young shudders to think what might have happened on this date — May 21 — in 2008 if he’d left the slider in the middle of the plate.
“It was an (0-2) count,” recalled Young, now MLB’s executive vice president for baseball operations. “It was a pitch I’d gotten him to chase before and he was out in front, kind of off-balance.